Blog

This week, Facebook reached its 500 million members milestone. CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who is the youngest self-made billionaire CEO, appeared in an interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC World News. A full-length feature film about the rise of Facebook called The Social Network is set to hit theaters in October. Mark Zuckerberg has already recorded his voice performance for an upcoming Season 22 episode of The Simpsons, cementing his persona as a pop culture icon. To think, all this started in a Harvard University dorm room in 2003.

In celebration, Facebook has launched its Facebook Stories page, where members can post stories about how the social media network has affected their personal lives and businesses can share how Facebook has helped their social media marketing efforts. According to the official Facebook stats page, the average user is linked to 60 pages, groups and events. Two-thirds of comScore’s U.S. Top 100 websites have integrated with Facebook, indicating that businesses are using Facebook marketing to promote their products and services.

Here are some fascinating facts about Facebook, including some little-known facts about its early stages, courtesy of Mashable:

Facebook started out as thefacebook.com, and prior to 2007, the homepage featured an image of a mystery man. The image was a manipulated photo of Al Pacino created by a classmate of Mark Zuckerberg.

Facebook was first rolled out to Ivy League colleges, then to spread in stages to other educational institutions. Once work networks were rolled out in May of 2006, the very first two official work places were Apple and Microsoft! Eventually, in September 2006, everyone was able to join Facebook regardless of school or company affiliation.

Remember those mysterious quotes about quails on the footer of Facebook pages in 2007? Turns out, Mark Zuckerberg is a huge film buff and those quail-themed quotes were inspired from the film The Wedding Crashers.

The average Facebook user today has 130 friends. How many do you have?

Like at Google, Facebook employees at their headquarters in Palo Alto, California get free breakfast, lunch and dinner at the café every day. There’s even a Facebook Lunchtime App where you can check what’s on the menu!